By Dan Ambrose: In something of a surprise, boxing newcomer, Roc Nation Sports, a company founded by famous rapper Jay-Z, won the purse bid today for the Peter Quillin vs. Matt Korobov (24-0, 14 KOs) fight on November 8th at a venue still to be determined.
Quillin will be making a defense of his WBO middleweight title against the No.1 WBO Matt Korobov in what will easily be Quillin’s toughest fight of his career thus far.
Roc Nation hired David Itskowitch, a former Golden Boy Promotion COO.
Roc Nation won the purse bid with a bid of $1,904,840. The next highest bid was by Golden Boy at $1,207,000, and $515,000. It seems like Roc Nation overbid for the fight.
The real question is which network will be willing to put the Quillin-Korovbov fight on? Quillin isn’t a big star, and his fights in the past have largely been mismatches against obscure fighters that were far, far out of his class.
Korobov, as flawed as he is, presents tremendous a leap up in talent from the guys that Quillin has been feasting on thanks to the matchmaking by his promoters at Golden Boy and his adviser. Even matched against less than dangerous opposition, Quillin hasn’t looked good. He struggled against Gabriel Rosado and appeared to be on his way to losing the fight when the fight was halted due to a cut that Rosado suffered.
In Quillin’s last fight, he defeated Lukas Konecny by an unimpressive 12 round unanimous decision last April in a fight where Quillin looked afraid of Konecny despite the fact that he didn’t have major power.
The possible venues are New York City at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn or Washington, D.C.
Korobov is coming off of a 10 round decision win over Jose Uzcategui last June. Korobov dominated the fight, but he appeared only capable of fighting hard for 30 second to 1 minute of every round. He would gas out quickly and spend the rest of the round looking exhausted while throwing nothing.
Comments are closed.